The Study of Deeper Learning: Opportunities and Outcomes found that students attending network high schools with a mature and well-implemented approach to promoting deeper learning experienced different instructional strategies, greater opportunities, and better results on a range of outcomes than did their matched counterparts in comparison sites. This brief examines how teachers’ own beliefs about teaching, their assessment of their peers’ professional culture, and their assessment of the success of the principal in providing instructional leadership and program coherence are related to students’ reports of deeper learning opportunities in their classes.

The Study of Deeper Learning: Opportunities and Outcomes assessed whether students who attended high schools that focused on deeper learning got more opportunities for deeper learning and whether they had better outcomes than students in comparison high schools. In an updated set of analyses from the study, AIR found that students who attended high schools focused on deeper learning were more likely to enroll in four-year institutions and in college in general than their peers who attended comparison schools.

Can deeper learning approaches lead to higher graduation rates? Consistent with the findings from the original Study of Deeper Learning, newly completed analyses find a graduation rate advantage of 8 percentage points for students in participating deeper learning network high schools compared with similar students in matched non-network high schools.

Deeper learning combines a deeper understanding of core academic content, the ability to apply that understanding to new situations, and a range of competencies related to human interaction and self-management. A recent study by AIR found that students in high schools that were part of networks associated with the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation’s Deeper Learning Community of Practice performed better than similar students in comparison schools on a range of measures.